Congelation (Coagulation)
Zodiacal correspondence (Pernety, 1758): Taurus ♉
Congelation, often used interchangeably with coagulation, is the fixing of a fluid or volatile substance into a solid, stable body. It is the complementary counterpart to dissolution, embodying the alchemical rhythm of solve et coagula ('dissolve and coagulate'). Pernety's scheme assigns it to Taurus, an earthy sign suited to consolidation, and Ripley made 'albificative freezing' his sixth gate. In the laboratory the term covered crystallization, freezing, precipitation, and the setting of amalgams and salts.
See also the concept page: Coagulation
Historical Development
Congelation names the passage from a liquid or vapour to a settled solid, the act of giving matter a durable body. Paired with solution, it forms one half of the maxim solve et coagula that structured much alchemical thinking about the rhythmic alternation of dissolution and fixation. The two operations were understood as a cycle that could be repeated to refine a substance step by step.
Pernety assigns congelation to Taurus; Ripley, working in a different but overlapping scheme, made 'albificative congelation' the sixth of his twelve gates. The two lists agree on this operation even where they diverge elsewhere, a reminder that the staged schemes drew on a shared pool of operations while ordering and naming them differently.
Textual Tradition
The operation is treated across the Latin and vernacular corpus and is folded into the staged works of Ripley and his many readers. Lyndy Abraham's survey of alchemical imagery documents how congelation carried symbolic weight (the binding of spirit into body) alongside its concrete laboratory sense.
Modern Scholarship
Modern scholarship reads congelation/coagulation as spanning several distinct laboratory phenomena (crystallization, precipitation, amalgamation, solidification on cooling), a good illustration of how a single actor's term can map onto multiple modern chemical categories. Historians caution against collapsing the period vocabulary into any one modern process.